The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, the approaches described in this section may not be prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Cloud printing services generally enable end users to access printing devices from client devices over a network, such as the Internet. Using a cloud printing service provider, an end user may register one or more printing devices with the cloud printing service provider for one or more user accounts. After registering a printing device, the user may use a client device, such as a laptop or mobile device, to submit print jobs that are sent to the printing device for processing via the cloud printing service provider. By configuring a printing device to process print jobs received from client devices using a cloud printing service, a user's client device need not have installed any particular printer drivers or even be able to communicate directly with the printing device in order to submit print requests.
Since cloud printing services typically push print jobs to printing devices immediately after submission, the delay may be short between an end user submitting a print request and a selected printing device generating a printout of the electronic document in the print job. If the user is not physically present near the printer when the printout is ready, others may gain unauthorized access to the printout.
In non-cloud printing environments, printing devices may be configured with a feature known as “locked printing” to provide control over access to printouts. When the locked printing feature is enabled and a print job is sent to the printing device, processing of the print job is deferred until a user enters authentication data at the printing device and the authentication data is verified. Once the authentication data is successfully verified, the printing device allows the print job to be processed, i.e., allows a printout of the electronic document in the print job to be generated. Although printing devices having locked printing features are useful in non-cloud printing environments, current cloud printing services do not support the ability for users to submit locked print jobs to registered printing devices. Based on the foregoing, there is a need for an approach that provides locked printing features in a cloud printing environment.